How do you get into the Christmas Spirit when challenges and discord are abounding in your life? This is a question I have been pondering lately.

Honestly, I have struggled with letting the circumstances swirling around me steal my joy. Have you ever been here, too?

The Christmas season can bring even more anxiety, busyness, and an expectation that we must find the elusive joy we are all supposed to feel this time of year. This is where I found myself. Until I went to worship the Lord and He gently reminded me of the obvious.

I stood in church and we began to sing a familiar Christmas song:

🎵Joy to the World!

The Lord is Come

Let Earth Receive Her King

Let every heart prepare Him room🎵

Wait, what? That last line grabbed me like never before! I wondered if my own heart had prepared room for Him this season or if was it still too crowded with anxiety, frustration, and discontent? I think I knew my answer.

In the words of that song, God reminded me again that true joy doesn’t come in a season or from our circumstances. We find it as we prepare room in our hearts and remember the baby boy born in a manger, come to save us all.

The joy of Christmas is so much more than a feeling. It’s a truth that seems so evident it’s hard to understand how we forget it so often. When we take our focus off of the struggles we face in life and shift them back to where they should have been all along, on Jesus, we find JOY!

I pray each of you will prepare room in your hearts for Jesus to find JOY for the season and all the year through! Merry Christmas

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Psalm 98:4